Konstantin Komarov, the founder and CEO of Paragon Software, in the Linux kernel mailing list. with a complete implementation of the file system , supporting read and write operations. The code is open under the GPL license.
The implementation supports all features of the current version NTFS 3.1, including extended file attributes, data compression mode, efficient handling of gaps in files, and replaying changes from the journal to restore integrity after failures. The proposed driver currently uses its own trimmed implementation of the NTFS journal, but plans to add support for full journaling over the existing universal block device (Journaling block device), on which journaling in ext3, ext4, and OCFS2 is based.
The driver is based on the codebase of an existing commercial by Paragon Software and is well-tested. The patches are formatted according to Linux code preparation requirements and do not contain bindings to additional APIs, allowing the new driver to be included in the main kernel. After the patches are included in the main Linux kernel, Paragon Software plans to maintain them, fix bugs, and expand functionality.
However, inclusion in the kernel may take time due to the need for the proposed code to be reviewed by third-party developers. Comments on the publication also highlight with building and with a number of for patch formatting. For example, it is suggested to break the submitted patch into parts, as 27,000 lines in one patch is too much and creates difficulties in reviewing and verifying. The MAINTAINERS file recommends explicitly defining the policy for further code maintenance and specifying the Git branch to which fixes should be sent. It is also noted that the addition of the new NTFS implementation needs to be agreed upon given the presence of the old fs/ntfs driver, which operates in read-only mode.
Previously, gaining full access to NTFS partitions from Linux required the use of the NTFS-3g FUSE driver, which operates in user space and does not provide the desired performance. This driver since 2017, similar to the read-only fs/ntfs driver. Both drivers were created by Tuxera, which, like Paragon Software, a proprietary NTFS driver distributed on a commercial basis.
Recall that in October last year, after of Microsoft's publicly available specifications and the granting of the right to use patents for exFAT in Linux free of charge, Paragon Software released the source code of its driver implementing the exFAT filesystem. The first version of the driver was limited to read-only operation, but a version with write support was in development. These patches remained unused, and the exFAT driver proposed by received criticized The book "BPF for Linux Monitoring"
Source: opennet.ru
